Updated Gmail News

Q: Has anything new been going on with Gmail lately? If so, please share!

A: All I can say is that all of you avid Gmail users are in luck! I didn’t know this until I was checking my very own account the other day. I was signing out and right before I did that, something caught my eye. It was a link at the top of the page that said something like “Five New Features!” After that, I just had to check them out and since you asked this question, there’s no doubt in my mind that I should share this wonderful news with all of you. Here we go!

First of all, there’s a couple of features that were just recently launched within Gmail and just in case you haven’t heard of them yet, I’d like to fill you in. The first one goes along with the Google Talk program. If you use that, you can now enjoy a voicemail service. By using Google Talk, you can leave voicemails for your friends and they can do the same for you. The message will be sent to your Gmail e-mail account as an audio file, so when you check your e-mail, you can check your voicemail at the same time! You can either download it or play it right from your Inbox. How cool is that?! To learn more, go here.

The next one is a new function you can use on multiple messages in your Gmail account. You can now choose several messages and apply the same action to all of them, all at once. For example, maybe you’d like to archive a series of messages. Select them and do it with one quick step. You can do this for spam e-mail that you want to get rid of, for labels and filters, etc. The options are endless with this one, but it will surely save you a lot of time! Find out more here.

Okay, now that those are out of the way, here are five brand new features you can start using in your Gmail account today.

1.) Reply on Top – When you’re replying to an e-mail, you usually have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the message just to hit the Reply button, right? That’s a big pain if the message is really long. Well, there’s good news, because you don’t have to do that anymore. There is now a Reply button right at the top of the message, so just click that and type away!

2.) Message Notifications – So, we all know that one of the coolest things about Gmail is that when you send out a message, you can see everyones’ replies to a conversation. You don’t just see one person’s, you see them all. But, with this, sometimes you see that someone wrote a better response than you did and that can probably be a little embarrassing. Well, Gmail wants to make sure that never happens to you. With this new feature, you can be right in the middle of typing your response and if someone else sends a message before you’re done, you will receive a notification for that message. After that, just hit Update Conversation and you will see what you missed. You can then plan your response around that and be on top of things better than ever!

3.) Forward It All – If you’re part of a conversation, it may go on for a long time. With everyone replying, the responses can get rather lengthy. So, what if you ever want to fill someone else in on what’s been said? It wouldn’t make sense to forward just one message to them, so you might as well forward the whole conversation, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought! You can now do that with the Forward All feature. Yes!

4.) Chat Offline Too – Need to tell one of your friends something right away, but they’re not online at that particular moment? Well, write them anyway! You can chat with your friends even when they’re offline. As soon as they log back in, they will get the messages you sent.

5.) Gmail Mobile – How would you like to be able to access your Gmail account on your cell phone? You can now do this with ease. It has the same Gmail interface that you are familiar with, your account will stay the same whether you access it from your computer or your phone and you can even still view attachments, like pictures and documents, on your phone. You can start using this new feature with just a couple clicks. Check it out here and get started!

Well, I hope that was enough to whet your Gmail appetite for now. I’m sure there will be more new features to come in the future. Until then, enjoy these!

~ Erin

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 2:27 PM and is filed under E-Mail Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 3147

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